I started my first job writing software for investment banking in 1998, in London. Right from the start people were talking about Y2K and we probably had a coup

I started my first job writing software for investment banking in 1998, in London. Right from the start people were talking about Y2K and we probably had a couple of million lines of pl/sql and vb code in our regulatory and risk management. There were a lot date checks/conversions which were often implemented differently and using different format masks. It was surprisingly common to use the YY and RR formats at that time rather than YYYY. Maybe this was a hangover from programs written for mainframe in assembly. We did spend a lot of time scanning code, and standardising and retesting stuff. Interestingly, when we went out in London for NYE (some people couldn't go as they were on support!) I remember going to an ATM and seeing the unexpected error "organization unknown" when I put in my card at about 12.15. I really remember thinking EVERYTHING was broken, but on reflection it seems more likely that someone consciously decided to turn off a few global links around that time to reduce chance of failures.